SOURCE: Black, James. “The Visual Artistry of Romeo and Juliet.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 15, no. 2 (spring 1975): 245-56.

In the following essay, Black traces patterns of visual pairing, duplication, and opposition in Romeo and Juliet.

The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. 

The first-act prologue to Romeo and Juliet invites the audience to use its eyes as well as its patient ears. “Our toil”—the actors' efforts—will try to compensate visually for anything that may elude hearing. There is a more confident note here than can be found in Shakespeare's other first-act prologues: “think that you see” is the supplication common to the prologues of Henry V and Henry VIII, while the rather arrogant prologue-speaker in Troilus and Cressida comes armed “not in confidence / Of author's pen or actor's voice.” Whether it is the sonnet form...